Earth in Full Glory
by Omnicat
Summary: Quatre LOVED the Earth. Maybe a bit too much.


**Title:** Earth in Full Glory

**Author:** Omnicat

**Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** The anime at least. Some knowledge of _Episode Zero_ would come in handy too.

**Warnings:** None.

**Pairings:** None.

**Summary:** Quatre _loved_ the Earth. Maybe a bit too much.

**Author's Note:** Enjoy!

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**Earth In Full Glory**

_The wide expanse of the heavens, drew his eye, an endless canvas of blues, renewed every sunset and sunrise in an explosion of pink, orange, red and yellow, decorated with castles of white and grey. The golden dunes of the desert and the glittering crystal plains of the Arctics, deadly, harsh realms richer than any Eden, were a canvas Quatre could stare at forever._

_The ever present bouquet of the Earth impregnated every breath he took, so poignant he could taste the planet's essence on his tongue - sweet and tart, tangy and musky, dusty and fresh, briny and moist, sulfuric and sickly, crisp and sated - all at once or one at a time depending on the location, ranging from light and wispy to heavy and stifling. It was enough to permanently inebriate Quatre if he let himself._

_Earth enveloped him in warm arms of morning light, stung with hot noon sun, caressed him with the winds, made his skin tingle with cold, whispered snow or pattering rain like notes from a piano, sometimes gentle and soothing, sometimes exuberant and manic, sometimes teasing him with the sharp impact of hail._

Quatre _loved_ the Earth. Really, _really_ loved it. It was everything his home in space was not: unpredictable, wild, chaotic, unrestrained. A mindbogglingly beautiful tapestry of imperfections, seemingly disorganized but actually so finely tuned that everything came together seamlessly. No human creation - heck, no human _body_ - could ever surpass such a masterpiece, in Quatre's opinion.

He was head over heels in love with the place, and the moment Trowa Barton, his dear friend and long-time telepathic counterpart, admitted to having been born and raised there, he immediately reworked his schedule for the next three years to include as many business trips to Earth as possible. Such an excuse, no matter how flimsy, was too good to pass up. When, on one of those trips, Trowa offered to take him to along on a 'road trip' across the Eurasian continent, Quatre had already said yes before Trowa had good and well verbalized the question.

Quatre could only barely keep his thoughts on the goal of their travels with the spectacle of the landscapes all around him, distracting him... Trowa had said something about wanting to retrace his old mercenary group's steps to see if he could cut away some loose ends that kept tripping him up, and Quatre's space heart - the only sense not preoccupied by Mother Nature - kept sending through impressions of a young girl with pale blond hair, grey eyes and a tear streaked face, but he wasn't really paying attention to those things.

Seeing as he was hanging from the open window ogling the scenery ninety-nine percent of the time, he missed every single wry look Trowa shot him from behind the wheel as they set course for the rainforests of Bangladesh. And his endless eulogies on the places they had been and the things they had seen made it impossible for Trowa to get even just one warning word in.

Thus it came to pass that Quatre only realized that inoculation against malaria did not stop the mosquitoes from biting you, that the danger of dehydration was not negated when the air consisted of only fifty percent air, with the other fifty percent being water, and that in the tropics, the prettiest vegetation had the potential to give you the worst itch, when he woke up in a local hospital after having been attacked by a monkey, with an IV in his arm and his entire body covered in cooling salve.

"I did try to warn you." Trowa commented dryly, leaning his chin in his hand and his elbow on the armrest of a plastic visitor's chair.

Quatre hung his head and looked up sheepishly through his bangs. "I'm sorry. I've been letting myself get carried away, haven't I?"

Trowa nodded indulgently.

"So what have you been doing while I was being treated for stupidity?"

"I made a girl cry."

Quatre looked at him oddly.

Trowa shrugged. "It was kind of a gut reaction. We talked after that. It's fine now."

"Oh..."

Trowa shot him a sly look. "She invited us over for dinner. Maybe she'll be willing to give you some tips about how to survive around here."

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**PSAN:** Hope you liked it! The girl mentioned is Middie Une, from _Episode Zero_. Why is she in this fic? Because I can never pass up an excuse.


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